Uncomprehending, she shook her head. He made as though to shut the door, gently. Magnolia had not spent years in the South for nothing. “Don’t you shut that door on me! I want to see Hetty Chilson.”
The man recognized the tone of white authority. “Wha’ you want?”
Magnolia recovered herself. After all, this was not the front door of a home, but of a House. “Tell her Mrs. Gaylord Ravenal wants to speak to her. Tell her that I have one thousand dollars that belongs to her, and I want to give it to her.” Foolishly she opened her bag and he saw the neat sheaf of bills. His eyes popped a little.
“Yes’m. Ah tell huh. Step in, ma’am.”
Magnolia entered Hetty Chilson’s house. She was frightened. The trembling had taken hold of her knees again. But she clutched the handbag and looked about her, frankly curious. A dim hallway, richly carpeted, its walls covered with a red satin brocade. There were deep soft cushioned chairs, and others of carved wood, high-backed. A lighted lamp on the stairway newel post cast a rosy glow over the whole. Huge Sèvres vases stood in the stained-glass window niches. It was an entrance hall such as might have been seen in the Prairie Avenue or Michigan Avenue house of a new rich Chicago packer. The place was quiet. Now and then you heard a door shut. There was the scent of coffee in the air. No footfall on the soft carpet, even though the tread were heavy. Hetty Chilson descended the stairs, a massive, imposing figure in a black-and-white patterned foulard dress. She gave the effect of activity hampered by some physical impediment. Her descent was one of impatient deliberateness. One hand clung to the railing. She appeared a stout, middle-aged, well-to-do householder summoned from some domestic task abovestairs. She had aged much in the last ten years. Magnolia, startled, realized that the distortion of her stout figure was due to a tumour.
“How do you do?” said Hetty Chilson. Her keen eyes searched her visitor’s face. The Negro hovered near by in the dim hallway. “Are you Mrs. Ravenal?”
“Yes.”
“What is it, please?”
Magnolia felt like a schoolgirl interrogated by a stern but well-intentioned preceptress. Her cheeks were burning as she opened her handbag, took out the sheaf of hundred-dollar bills, tendered them to this woman. “The money,” she stammered, “the money you gave my—you gave my husband. Here it is.”
Hetty Chilson looked at the bills. “I didn’t give it to him. I loaned it to him. He said he’d pay it back and I believe he will. Ravenal’s got the name for being square.”